Aaron Judge Is Having One Of The Greatest Seasons In Baseball History And Not Enough People Are Talking About It
Mike Stobe. Getty Images.Through April 26th, Aaron Judge had just four homers to his name while slashing .178/.317/.356. After a shortened Spring Training, and a hampered 2023 season thanks to a concrete slab in Dodger Stadium, people started to have legitimate worry about what was going on with the Yankees star. That big 9 year, $360M deal the Yankees gave him after his historic 2022 MVP season started to feel like a mistake to some. Hell, there was one guy on Twitter asking to demote him to the minor leagues.
Then the monster became unleashed.
Since April 27, he's batting .380 with a .507 OBP while slugging a fucking ridiculous .829. In that 98 game span he's blasted 43 homers and driven in 104. All while being walked 83 times. It's a run that really only peak Barry Bonds could match.
After Judge's two bombs last night he's up to 47 on the year, and on pace for 60.
He's actually unbelievable to watch. I was there last night to see those two homers. It's a privilege to watch him play this game. This stat posted on reddit actually blew my mind. It's laughable.
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Of course Judge leads baseball in virtually every hitting category, besides batting average. The fact that he's been able to post these power numbers while still holding a .334 average is lunacy. Bobby Whitt Jr. is fucking awesome. He's the definition of a cornerstone, franchise player and Kansas City is lucky to have him locked up for over a decade. He's nowhere close to Judge when it comes to the MVP race, and the odds reflect that (Judge -1500).
OPS+ is a great stat to compare how you're doing compared to the rest of the league's hitters. 100 means you're league average. 115 means you're 15% better than the league average hitter. Judge is at 226. There's three guys ahead of him ever when it comes to the best OPS+ for a season.
Keep in mind he's doing this all in a year where offense is down across the league.
I could go on and on when it comes to Judge's greatness. Hell, Juan Soto is having the best season of his career and he's been almost forgotten about because of how much an alien Judge is. I don't really understand why anyone keeps pitching to him, especially a team like the Guardians who clinging to their first place lead over Minnesota and KC. Hopefully they never get a clue. If the Yankees are to win the World Series with their painfully flawed roster he'll need to duplicate this in October. It's all people come back with when people gloat about his numbers. It's all they have and I want to take that from them more than anything.